Finding Hope
by jilyjackson
Summary: Everybody deals with grief in their own way. Annabeth Chase never expected to wake up on the morning of her eighteenth birthday to see her father drop dead from a heart attack. And when that happened, she never expected her stepmother to throw her out on the doorstep with nothing more than a new inheritance and Annabeth's admittance to Dartmouth (READ FULL SUMMARY INSIDE)


**A/N: Hey! This is a new FanFiction I've been thinking about writing, but I'm not quite sure. Here's a prologue to the FanFiction. If you want me to continue or not to continue, please review or let me know! I'll need at least three positive reviews to continue it. **

**Summary (full): Everybody deals with grief in their own way. Annabeth Chase never expected to wake up on the morning of her eighteenth birthday to see her father drop dead from a heart attack. And when that happened, she never expected her stepmother to throw her out on the doorstep with nothing more than a new inheritance and Annabeth's admittance to Dartmouth College to guide her. Of course, things for Annabeth don't always go as planned. Still grieving and going half out of her mind, Annabeth takes a year off college to go mountain-climbing in the Andes Mountains to clear her head in the tranquility of nature. What she gets, however, is far more than she bargains for. Insert Percy, the dashing mountain guide who will lead her and a company of six others on a two-week trek in the Andes. Percy turns Annabeth's already topsy-turvy world upside down in all sorts of uncomfortable places. Annabeth finds herself divulging her many secrets in the strange, exotic world in which she finds herself, because, really, in the Andes- world of snowy peaks, drug smugglers, political rebel groups, and rogue cowboys- anything can happen. **

**Rating: T**

**Genre: Realistic-Fiction (A/U: no gods)**

**Disclaimer: Do I own Percy Jackson? I think not. I'm just a middle-school writer, for God's sake.**

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><p>Prologue<p>

I HAD NEVER been an adventurous person.

My mother had been. The little memories I had of her were of her Louis Vuitton suitcase sitting on the staircase, smelling faintly of her _Chanel No. 5 _perfume. My mother and father's arguing voices drifted downstairs, shouting and screaming. I would just sit on the stairs in the foyer of our little two-story colonial, sifting through my mother's stack of receipts she'd need to travel wherever she was going next. I'd read her plane ticket, oftentimes not knowing where _Austria _was, or _Belgium, _or _Tasmania. _

And then, after what seemed like a lifetime, my mother would come downstairs in her little sunhat and Ray-Bans with a smile plastered on. _Annabeth, honey_, she'd say, _come give your mommy a kiss before she goes_. So I'd get up from my crouch on the stairs and hug her, clinging to the back of the ratty old jacket she always wore. I'd take a deep breath, inhaling the faint scents of cigar smoke and _Chanel No. 5, _burying my face into the soft leather of her coat.

Then my mother would politely detach me, and kneel down so that we were face-to-face: our identical grey eyes clashing, a mix of storm against storm. My father would be waiting at the top of the stairs in his tweed jacket and goatee, looking down, stony and impassive as a brick wall.

Just as my eyes flitted to my father, my mother would turn my chin with the palm of her hand to look at her face. _Annabeth, baby girl, _she'd say. _Your mommy loves you very much. You know that, don't you? _And I'd nod, even though I didn't, not really.

Instead I would nod and say, _Yes, Mommy, I know. And I love you very much too. To the moon and back._

My mother would smile and hold out her pinkie. I twisted my pinkie around hers, like a pinky-promise, but laden with so many more promises and givens. _To the moon and back, _she'd say. _Always and forever. _

And the she'd stand, kiss my forehead, and, without looking back, roll her Louis Vuitton suitcase out the front door. My father would sigh gustily, but when I looked up to see him on his perch at the top of the stairs, he would already be gone. When I turned to see my mother drive away in her beat-up old Volkswagen, she would be gone, too, nothing more than a streak of gray smoke in the road and the echoing sound of the peal of tires against asphalt where she had been.

I would make my way to my father's study after that, sneaking into the small room filled with World War II model airplanes. Even after we moved out of that colonial, I still remembered the room: paneling of cherry-wood, the faint smell of turpentine from where my father had painted his planes mixed in with the musty scent of books. The shelves full of books themselves, riddled with dust and cobwebs near the top, with the books my father never read, and with the ripped volumes peppered with notes taken with ballpoint pen on the manila pages of the books my father poured over incessantly.

My father's desk was there, too, the mahogany structure with his brass desk lamp. It was always messy, scattered papers over top, ink blots and stains all over the place, pens and pencils strewn everywhere, drawers open haphazardly. And the globe that sat on his desk, a yellowish, antique-looking thing with a metal base that must have weighed a thousand pounds.

Every time after my mother left, I would go into that room and, on the little globe, search for the destination I had read on my mother's plane ticket. Sometimes it would take hours, other times minutes. But every time without fail, I would find the place I was looking for. And then I'd get onto the floorboards and pray to God that my mommy would come back to me.

She almost always came back, with a souvenir from her travels: a little wooden figurine from Cape Town, a model of the Eiffel Tower from Paris, a monk's sash from a monastery in the Himalayas, a tea set from London, a pair of gambling dice from Las Vegas. She would come back happy, elated, half-hungover, and beautiful, her dark hair usually in some sort of new hairdo and thousand-dollar clothes on her body.

As was human nature, I didn't really remember the times that my mother came back. I did, however, remember the time she didn't. On the day before she was supposed to arrive at our house, a letter came in the mail with a no-return address from somewhere in South America.

_Frederick, _it read.

_I'm not coming home. And I could waste my time writing and explaining why to you, but if you don't already know, then I think that might suffice as answer enough for you. I am done being under your thumb and suffering under you. I am done having to escape every few months just to get away from you. I'm not going to do it anymore. _

_Don't waste your time trying to contact me. Even if you inexplicably do find me, I will not come home for you. I will _never _come back to you._

_Take care of Annabeth. She's a sweet girl, and doesn't deserve such a rotten father and a rotten mother. I was never cut out to be a mother, and she'll likely do far better with whatever woman you choose to remarry. _

_Just take care of our daughter. And don't try and find me._

_-Athena_

That was the first letter. The other letter was for me.

_Dearest Beth,_

_I love you so very much. To the moon and back. But I cannot come home. I cannot _ever _come home. Trust in your father and do whatever he tells you. You must trust in him, as he is the only parent there in the flesh that you have left._

_It is a great lament of mine that I cannot stay to watch you grow up. But I have given you advice. They are in the following nine letters. Read them on each birthday, and they are as such labeled. I will be with you every year, if not in the flesh._

_Remember, Beth: to the moon and back. _

_Love, _

_Mommy_

I was nine years old when my mother left. I never followed. On each birthday, after I had eaten more of my fair share of grocery-store cake and opened each of my presents, I went upstairs into my small little attic room, opened up my sock drawer, and brought out the next letter. Then, I locked the door, unsealed the envelope, and began to read.

They were long, ten pages at least for all of them. They each had stories about her when she was a girl, and advice. That wasn't the only present I received from my mother. Every year, without fail, no matter how we moved, I got a box in the mail with a no-return address. The first was a charm bracelet with a tiny silver Leaning Tower of Pisa. They were, as my mother's letters said, where she was visiting on my birthday.

On my wrist, I had a handful of charms spanning the globe. In my sock drawer, I had ten letters. And after the age of nine, that was all I had from my mother.

I was never an adventurous girl for a reason. I never wanted to be the kind of woman my mother was. I never wanted to have a baby and leave it so that I could go travel the world with nothing but a charm bracelet and a box of letters to remember me by. I never wanted to travel the globe but have nothing but souvenirs to show for my life existence. I wanted stability. I _needed _stability.

Of course, one didn't always get what they bargained for. My life certainly didn't turn out the way I expected. There were four major rifts in the carefully created world that I meticulously calibrated around me.

The first was the day my father married another woman.

The second was the day that I ceased to be an only child.

The fourth was the day my father died.

And the third?

That was too shameful to even contemplate putting down on paper.

This is my story. It's a long one, full of heartbreak and tears. It's not easy, not for the writer, and not for the reader. The third major rift in my careful world is my secret. You'll just have to wait to get that one. I've already told you all my other secrets- save two. One- the third rift- you will find out in time.

The other secret is what really happened in the two weeks I spent traveling the Andes. Nobody knows what happened up there save five souls. I am one of those souls.

Because, of course, we embarked with seven, but only came back with five.

And this is the story of how that came to be.

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><p><strong>AN: Hope you all liked it! If you want me to write the story or if you have suggestions/constructive criticism, please review!**


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